Triumph

45 years ago - William MacIntyre is born in Metropolis, the son of a small-time criminal.

29 years ago - 14-year-old William MacIntyre learns that his father is a gunman for Intergang.

26 years ago - 17-year-old William MacIntyre becomes a deep coal miner.

25 years ago - 20-year-old William MacIntyre is the sole survivor when trapped underground while Viminians mine the planet’s electromagnetism until they are stopped by Abin Sur. William discovers his new ability to manipulate electromagnetism, taking on the superhero identity, Triumph.

20 years ago - 25-year-old William MacIntyre tracks a mysterious alien entity living amongst normal people. He confronts it in Aurora, Colorado, his mounting frustration at his inability to subdue it and its refusal to fight back spurs his anger until he destroys several downtown buildings. When the alien saves the people he puts in harm's way, the people refuse to let him continue. The national guard is called to suppress him, not the alien menace. He is told by state officials not to resume his Triumph identity.

16 years ago - 29-year-old William MacIntyre sees that the alien menace he was tracking become a member of the new Justice League, and brands them all as threats.

14 years ago - 31-year-old William MacIntyre, having seen Mike Miller successfully suppress the alien menace, attacks and incapacitates him on the Justice League Satellite, but is stopped before he can kill him by the rest of the Justice League.

7 years ago - 38-year-old William MacIntyre, seeing that the Justice League is having a membership drive with a new lineup. Uses the opportunity to attempt to reclaim his place as a superhero. His frustration when the other candidates fail to recognize his clear authority compounds with his anger when he realizes that the alien menace is still among their ranks. He attacks the other candidates, and has to be stopped. He has his powers psychically suppressed.

3 years ago - 42-year-old William MacIntyre is approached by Circe, who removes the suppression of his powers. He elects to join other enemies of the Justice League in their group the Injustice Gang. He attempts to lash out at both groups, and is turned into an ice statue by Circe.

1 year ago - 44-year-old William MacIntyre, still frozen in the Watchtower, is shattered and killed by Curt Calhoun.

We do a good amount of reimagining here, using characters for something other than what they were originally conceived to be, or to fill roles that weren't filled otherwise. This is absolutely an example of that, where we take a pretty obscure character from Justice League lore and reimagine them as a core nemesis for Martian Manhunter, but the more you know of Triumph's history, the more this character interaction starts to click... and what results is a relationship between comic characters that is pretty unique and that really highlights elements of the hero, which is exactly what great villains do. Let us know what you think!

Triumph's Comic History

Triumph as a character exists almost entirely around and because of the 94 crossover miniseries Zero Hour. The core narrative conceit of that crossover is that time and the timeline are coming apart because of some time-breaking shenanigans by new villain Extant, who is probably Hal Jordan but honestly I'm not sure because this thing is basically unreadable chaos. Most DC books had a Zero Hour tie-in of some kind, and the current Justice League series did so by introducing Triumph, a hero that was apparently part of the original founding League members, but who had been lost to time.

He became part of the cast of the Justice League Task Force, where he regularly clashed with Martian Manhunter, because while the team was meant to be a training unit for newcomers like Cindy Reynolds and the Ray, Triumph believed himself to be a veteran hero. He got his own 4-issue miniseries in 1995 by Christopher Priest, who gave him a loose origin explaining his electromagnetic mastery and also giving him a personality framework that kind of established why this guy was such a jerk. He appeared again in a story in Morrison's JLA, where his status as a fallen former member of the Justice League is exploited by mystic forces, making him a really great threat for the entire League.

Our Triumph Story

Speaking entirely of Triumph as a comic character, I think his biggest strength is his connection to Christopher Priest from his four issue miniseries. It's very clear that Priest has a real voice for this guy. His powers and origin and so on are all really given a pass, because the focus is on exploring what makes him so angry. Morrison, I think, really picked up what Priest had already established and took it to it's logical conclusion.

It's his connection to Martian Manhunter through the Justice League Task Force that inspired our take on the character. We imagined a character who had assumed the role of a superhero, but who because of his own arrogance or prejudice just couldn't accept the idea that this alien was in fact someone who could be trusted. They MUST be evil, right? Because they are different! I'm good and therefore this MUST be evil! It proved to be a really fertile concept... you could just keep pushing it making Triumph slide further and further into his own obsessive narcissism. We found we could do so all the way to even make him J'onn's nemesis in the Injustice Gang... that he would have gotten so lost in his twisted perspective that J'onn's alies must be evil, and therefore this group of their enemies must be good!!! It's a characterization that we really like, and it allows us to make Triumph a really fun way to conceive of a hero's nemesis.

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